The University of Oxford is likely to get the biggest allocation from the so called 'Laura Spence' money - government grants for elite academic institutions to recruit more state school pupils. The prime minister, Tony Blair, announced the list of winners of the money last week.

If Oxford was to meet the government''s target of attracting 80% of state school pupils in its student intake it would receive about £2.8m over three years. The university would have to recruit another 900 state school entrants if it was to reach this target. State schools currently make up 50% of new students at the university.

The allocation of £18m of government funds over three years for 27 universities provides about £3,000 for every extra state pupil. Other universities receive much smaller amounts of money per student recruited from poor backgrounds.

These indicative allocations come from the 1998-99 performance indicators published by the higher education funding councils last year. The 27 institutions qualified for the funds because they currently enrol less than 80% of state school pupils.

Our calculation assumes that this is the target to be achieved for the institutions. Overall 5,838 students would need to be recruited if every university reached the 80% threshold. If the £18m is distributed equally among the students they will each receive £3,000 over the three years.

The following figures show the indicative government pro-rata funds for recruiting more state school pupils: